childhood of monsters
by edeabeth
Summary: AU: Lilac Potter locks her door and spends the night waiting for monsters to come. (companion to mourned childhood) (abuse)
1. Chapter 1

Lilac is a silly name, she muses as the hat bellows her name for the entire hall to hear. Lilac Potter is entirely far too anxious, standing before an audience in the boots she bought from the thrift store months before she had even heard of Hogwarts. It's a lovely building, she thinks as she gazes up at the ceiling, slowly making her way down to the rickety stool with her fists clenched tightly. They will not tremble she vows with determination as an older woman sets the worn hat down on her head.

The hat is large on her, covering her green eyes perfectly.

 _You're an odd one_ she heard it's voice whisper in the depths of her mind. Within second it practically screams Ravenclaw and she accepts its decision easily. Ravenclaw sounds like a practical house for a quiet girl and maybe she can fade away within the people.

It's a lovely thought that proves wrong as whispers practically drown her. She's the girl who lived, sorted into a bookish house of nobodys. Lilac Potter couldn't possibly belong amongst the bronze and indigo-she needs to be surrounded by gold and crimson.

She settles down at the table away from the other students, tugging at the sleeves of her robes. They don't quite cover her skinny wrists and leave her bruises far to exposed for her liking.

"What do you aspire to be?" Demands an older boy, eyes bright in the candle light.

She shrugs. "A writer, maybe."

He looks horrified. "Of what? Spells?"

"Stories." She says as simply as she can, turning away to gaze up at the staff table. Figures are lined up and she can feel their power from across the room, bright and feverish as it pools in one small corner of the universe. One woman wears robes made up of stars and another man trembles, turban resting crooked on his head.

"That is such a bore. Who has time for such trivial nonsense?"

Everyone bursts into fierce giggles but they don't matter much. They ring as familiar as Dudley's taunts but she learned years ago how to tune them out.

Eventually dinner ends, her plate mostly untouched, and she leaves for her tiny bedroom that exists away from the others. Her trunk sits before her bed and for the first time she feels safe.

Lilac Potter locks her door and spends the night waiting for monsters to come.

.

She hates Granger.

Hate isn't a strong enough word, she thinks as she glowers at the brown haired girl. She _despises_ her.

The girl haunts her footsteps, spewing odd facts about the night her parents died and she defeated the most powerful wizard (a fact entirely wrong, she knows. He was one of the stronger at the time, rivaled only by the Headmaster. History reveals a long trail of evil villains capable of sinking Atlantis and so much more.). Lilac doesn't need this useless twit bringing up things better left buried, so she tells her so. Abruptly in a corridor before class with a large audience.

Her hands tremble at their stares and she wishes she was able to hide from everyone.

Potions, however, is a delight.

It isn't simple. It's painfully delicate and needs complete and utter patience. Professor Snape looks at her for exactly seven seconds before turning away, giving a speech filled with passion and contempt. It makes sense, gazing at the set of cauldrons simmering. It reminds her of chemistry, filled with equations and proper balances and so many possibilities for errors.

Lilac sits with three Gryffindors, Granger unfortunately part of the numbers. At every question the professor asks in a delicate voice she responds in a blunt manner. She stumbles over her knowledge. Her responses are faulty and less than adequate, and Professor Snape is slippery in his questions.

He looks defensive standing in the shadows of the classroom, and she thinks she gets it. Standing in front of people day in and day out would break her nerves entirely.

At the end of class she hands him a bottled potion, perfectly matching the colour of her eyes.

He looks surprised.

.

She stands in front of her mirror, dark hair spilling over her pale shoulders. Her body aches, still healing from her Uncle's punishments. She had a burn over her chest, from where her aunt threw hot tea at her and on her back in a passive bruise from where the frying pan hit her. Along her spine are a number of welts scabbing over, reminders of the belt.

He always made her gather the belt, taking it from his closet and bringing it to the bathroom where he waited for her. She'd have to count each blow and sometimes he'd wash the wounds with vinegar to make her twist and cry out.

Her body is pale and almost ruined by the abuse, ugly scars covered her legs.

She turns away and dresses for the day carefully.

.


	2. Chapter 2

Lilac Potter lies in the dark room, painfully aware of her sharp her hips seem and how skin seems to just stretch over bones entirely. At first she spent hours practicing, doing crunches and push ups before hunger overwhelmed her entirely. The bars on the window make the bedroom smaller than it is, making her clench her hands into the thin bedsheets. They're an ugly pastel colour, used to be pink with a rose pattern but long since melting away into a messy shade.

The cat flap opens as a tray slides through, her aunts narrow face glowering through briefly. "Wasting my good food on you, you ungrateful little monster."

"However can I thank you?" Lilac asked thoughtfully as she imagined the stacks of books at Hogwarts. "Far to kind of you, taking the time to feed me."

"One day that lip will get you in trouble, whelp."

"I reckon it'll be far more pleasant than this."

She dreams that she is made of star dust. She is twirling along the horizon, free from corners and stairwells and angry locks. Her aunt's voice is dreadfully shrill and slowly the floorboard groan.

"He'll sell your pathetic body, you know. Apparently you're good enough for my husband, you slut. Going around in those clothes and giving him those looks. You want him to fuck you, want him to put that collar on you and fuck you hard." Her words hit her hard. The leather collar around her neck is tight and she longs to remove it. The heat is unbearable and the collar does little to give her any comfort. "He's coming home from work now."

"School is tomorrow," Lilac says, turning her head. The tray of soup looks stone cold. "You'll have to let me out then."

"I'll do no such thing. You belong to me, and you will stay here. Bitch, you think you get to gallivant across the country, going bippity boppity boo?"

Desperation ceased her. Magic was pooling in her stomach and she could feel the locks on the door-all thirteen of them.

Slowly the broke open. She wasn't entirely sure how she managed to feat but her aunt screamed loudly. Lilac managed to get to her feet carefully, swaying as hunger clawed at her.

"Goodbye. I'll see you next summer," she sighed.

That night she spent the night at the train station, waiting for the train to arrive.

.

She avoids her housemates. They're aggressive, fighting to be the best. The girl in her year group ruins a boy's homework out of fear and another shreds textbooks before finals. Lilac begins studying runes and wards, hoping to keep her belongings intact by the end of the year.

The common room is rigid and uncomfortable, people gawking and hovering and demanding all sorts of things. She begins finding refuge in unused classrooms, comfortable amongst the dust and streaked windows. Lilac spends her time drawing, ink forming people with gouged out eyes and children crumbling into swirls of dark designs.

Professor Snape finds her one late morning, bent over a particular image complex and painful. It's far too familiar to her; days spent counting hours and hoping that someone would save her.

"Whatever are you doing in here?" He asks, words careful.

She gives him a shrug and a vague comment. She doesn't mention that one of the older girl's had left a bruise on her arm from threatening her the day before, trying to make her cower when she returned with a 100% on a potions essay. Something rare apparently at Hogwarts. She thinks she makes up for it when she fails the Defense paper, the professor ridiculously inadequate at teaching.

Lilac feels cold despite sitting in the sun. The sweater she wears is the warmest thing she owns but dwarfs her tiny frame. It falls over her shoulders slightly, revealing the blue purple yellow marks.

"Have you been eating properly?" He asks her stiffly. She knows exactly what he's wanting to know because she has been picking at her food for the first two weeks back, barely eating enough to sustain a small bird.

"I eat well enough, I suppose. Though, if it concerns you, I'll try to eat a bit more." She gives him a thin smile.

"I do not have time dealing with fainting spells, Miss Potter."

She wants to give him a smile but fears it'll seem too harsh. Lilac had suffering fainting spells all summer it seemed. They were a relief, stolen moments when she didn't have to be aware of anything. "No one does, really. Waste of time."

"May I see what you are drawing?"

"What do you think?" Lilac asked him softly.

"I think you see more than most ever dream of."

He turned and walked away.

.

The next essay she writes she adds a little detail. She expects he'll dock points or give her a detention for defacing her work but when it is returned, all she gets is a barely there smile.

She likes that smile, she muses.

.

Ginny Weasley dies beneath the school and Dumbledore solves the conflict quietly and with little gossip. No one knows entirely what happened but Lilac doesn't entirely care.


	3. Chapter 3

Third year is a depressing grey thing that she barely remembers.

What she does remember is the space of time between second and third year in which her body is violated and her pleas to the headmaster are ignored but with one response- _do keep your chin up_.

Lilac Potter is tired and angry and so when she returns to school she scowls and hits angry stone walls. She gets angrier and angrier every day, seeing the old man sit watching her and people whisper about Sirius Black that murderous mad man, hanging at her heels.

Granger made the mistake of asking her how it felt to be the result of so much violence and death.

She slapped her so hard Granger saw black and blue in the mirror for days.

.

Goyle tried to rape her eleven times that year but the twelfth time Professor Snape stunned him. She stood there with her fingers broken and her chest heavy and remembering her Uncle's angry, possessive hands. He talks to her but she doesn't hear what he says, she cannot hear anything but her uncle's breathing and the touch of his hands against her thighs and she swears she'll peel her skin off than let him touch her one more time.

.

Her fingers heal crooked.

They don't bother her much, other than a dull ache that she compares with her heart.

.

She doesn't remember what happened exactly but she wakes up in the hospital room with dog bites around her ankles and bruises from a devil tree around her chest. Her leg is broken and swollen from being thrashed and flung about while a man with a face paler than her own sits next to her bed, gazing at her like he's solved a riddle.

.

Professor Snape gives her a long look before he leaves her with this man and she wishes he never left.

.

That summer she screams and no one hears.


	4. Chapter 4

Fourth year is a circus, she thinks as hides in unused classrooms. She sometimes sleeps in the dust amongst forgotten chairs and unwanted desks. It's familiar, lying beneath them and feeling shadows twist beside her. Lilac Potter has never been a stranger to the darkness, she was raised amongst that and unwanted things.

Lilac Potter had always been unwanted.

She used to imagine her mother would have raised her right, loved her a little. Maybe her father would have spent time with her in the proper way without his hands touching her.

Now she knows her mother might have been a submissive trophy to her father and father was a blatant asshole, if Sirius's letters were anything to go by.

She wants nothing to do with any part of her parent's legacy.

.

When the goblet howls her name is a shrill demand she knows she's being set up.

She had no desire for glory or money-she's Lilac Potter, heroine from a world driven by murderers in masks and plucked from a cradle next to her mother's dead body. She had money already so why would she present herself to the world the way the headmaster wants/won't you try to be nicer he asks.

Being nice will get you killed, she had told him with eyes blazing and bitterness dripping from her teeth.

she thinks.

Everyone stares at her as she strides down the pathway, an echo of her name vibrating in the air.

So she does the next logical thing.

She flips the world off and the audience flies into a howling rage and it's beautiful.

Snape gives her a long stare as she passes by but she's resigned.

.

She charms herself invisible easily, allowing herself to creep amongst the rocks and feel the heat of fires before taking the golden egg and slipping back to the shadows of the arena before anyone of the audience knew what happened.

Three days later Snape returns her essay on a consideration of poisons with an precisely drawn star at the very end of her writing.

.

She dresses in black lace, a dress fitted to her body. There's a long slit up the leg that shows a mosaic of scars along her legs for the world to see. Some lady journalist with a bone to pick with her has been flaying her for the world to see, so Lilac will give her a corpse to work with.

She wears a veil. Married to her fate, forever together with death.

She smiles that night brilliantly and sharply and the world quivers and the audience stares and she is everything she ever wanted.

.

Games end the way all games do.

With a body, with a victor and with death approaching.


	5. Chapter 5

He gives her his bedroom.

Silk sheets that mould and cobwebs that almost look like lace haunt the room. She's well aware of the stash of empty fire whisky bottles beneath his bed and she's seen the pictures of half-naked women riding broom sticks he'd stuck to the walls as a boy.

He rapes her efficiently and with intention, calling her Lilly and then James and then his.

When she attempts to leave, he beats her.

He breaks his arm and hits her hard and tries his very best to break her but what he does not understand is that she is a soldier trained for death and as long as she wears her angry combat boots she is ready for everything ready for him and she will never break.

.

She writes to Snape anyways, when he fits her with a collar.

.

She never liked collars.

.

Him trying to fix her is hours upon hours of coaxing and patience trembling.

The first potion smells like lemons, like the bright yellow drink of chemicals her Aunt once made her drink as a child. It results in her struggling in his arms, screaming from pain and refusal as he refuses to let her go.

He's holding onto her to fix her, her broken body with its angry bruises and terrible history.

They manage with him holding her in his lap, arm tight around her waist. He takes the first sip of the drink, promising she will not die, she will not hurt this will help her, please just drink the potion.

When she does, he smiles.

He takes of the collars, applies a red gel to her face that stings just a little bit in the way that he promised, and he gives her pajamas to big but they are the nicest clothes that she ever wore.

.

He finds her two nights later hiding in a closet, trying to calm herself down.

Snape recites potion ingredients and their properties to her before she falls asleep in the narrow confines. Lilac is in unaware when he pulls her out and into his arms.

.

That summer she is the safest she has ever been.


	6. Chapter 6

He finds her holding her hand to her chest, the hand with the crooked fingers and the hand attached the bones that he had ever so gently set himself months before.

There was a certain degree of stubbornness to his frown that made her surrender her raw, bleeding hand with words carved into the back.

LIAR.

"The one thing you are most certainly not is a liar. You are not creative enough to make up a lie that big," He informed her as he applied some foul smelling potion to the back of her hand. She attempted to shrink away and withdraw but the look he gave her made her freeze.

"Haven't you heard, Sir? I'm a nutter."

"Ten points for being insolent."

.

He silently manages to force her into eating more from across the Great Hall, his eyes firmly fixed on her small little form as she sits by herself and away from the crowd of blue and silver trimmed students who sit bent over textbooks with eyes that move too quick for the text. Lilac knew the real skill of understanding the art of understanding which was to sit patiently with whatever dusty, forgotten textbook and sit there until she understood exactly what she needed to know.

She eats a few more grapes at a time and adds a dinner roll to her plate when his dark stare finds her and she glowers back.

.

"You've been distant, my girl," Albus told her sternly. "Surely you'd like to make friends, plan your future."

"I already got my plans laid out." She said, her words clipped and brisk as she declines his lemon candies that hide truth potions.

"What, might I ask, are those?"

"Just bury me in a shallow grave; wouldn't want you to be to troubled when I've finally died for you ungrateful little bastards."

Her mind blanks.

.

 _Where are you I thought you were here, were you in the basement again? I cannot find you, it's like circling my cell trying to find you I thought I left you in our room did you find a way out was there a key, I never had a key. School time is a wonderful time, I used to play tricks on the Slytherins with your father you know/ we used a potion once that made this girl fall asleep and let peter play with her. It was a riot, but you're mum was mad. Never seen her so angry, eyes so bright at the sight of that naked little first year. What a fright she was. Where are you? Do you like flying much? I can't find you._

She burns his letters.

.

Gaps in her memory frighten her and so do the nightmares where she is a snake killing a red headed man, and other dreams are her godfather trapped in a room dying and that last one gives her satisfaction despite the horrible screams.

.

"Whatever are you doing out here?" Severus demanded, finding her standing outdoors at five in the morning barefoot. Her feet felt raw and cold and frigid in the bitter air and he's hitting her with several warming charms and demanding a house elf to bring him a pair of slippers.

"I don't remember." She tells him, lips blue like drowned little girls with glassy eyes.

He frowns and she shivers.

"Albus has been watching you."

"Who is he?"

.

It takes her weeks to recover from the constant probing. Between Voldemort and Albus's constant mental attacks she doesn't see straight much less think straight.

Severus is patient though, waiting for her to remember what she had for dinner the night before and where she put her boots and why on Earth she's wandering the castle barefoot, hands clutching a pair of mismatching socks.

When her mind straightens she sobs in relief.

.

Sirius dies.

She doesn't actually care.


	7. Chapter 7

She kills death and finally turns away from its shadowy embrace.

The world celebrates, fireworks setting skies on fires and families celebrating survival rather than loss. It makes her sick, as they Christian her Woman-Who-Lived, a child transformed into a soldier.

Albus gives her a smile and tries to touch her but she steps back, eyes bright and smile cold. "Go to hell, you vile old man."

She feels his attempts at changing her attitude, making her compliant. It doesn't work because a shadow of Severus falls upon the man and he's attacking the man just as capable and suddenly Albus looks old, shrinking back with his eyes watering and hands trembling. "My dear, I only wanted to serve your purpose, your fate."

"Bullshit, you wanted me to serve your demands."

She tosses the bloody dagger she used to kill Voldemort with at his feet and tucks herself into Severus's side. They dissolve into the air and end up in France, her feet bare and his stern face smiling for the first time and they tremble, her hands clinging to his robes while he doesn't let go because she nearly died, looking death in the face with a knife behind her back.

"You're alive," he whispered, heartbroken at the little figure in his arms so broken and fragile.

She gives him a thin smile in return, "I used to play with little toy soldiers when I was younger. I know war."

.

Lilac Potter was raised in war.

.


End file.
